Social Media

5 Key Trends Supercharging Today's Digital PR

In 2012, Social Media will move beyond growth to saturation. This means that digital public relations is changing quickly.

Recently, I had an opportunity to speak about the opportunities and trends in digital public relations at the PR News Digital Summit. Here's a quick look at what I think social media saturation and mobile growth mean for public relations this year.

1. Beyond the Second Screen: 24 Hours of Screens

According to Comscore’s recent social media study, the social media category as a whole is on the cusp of becoming the dominant form of online content; it accounted for 16.6% of Internet time in 2011. And this year it is expected to surpass portals as the most engaging online activity. Engagement is the key word there.

Social media saturation coupled with the rapid growth of mobile, tablets and connected TVs mean we are beyond the second screen — we are now at more than 24 hours' worth of screens per day. There are even apps to influence your dreams!

People are constantly connected and consuming media, which sounds daunting but it is great news for media creators. And now PR professionals are not soley pitching the media, but they too are media creators.

2. Think Like PR People. Measure Like Mad Men.

This means online media formarts are converging. "P.O.E.M." (Paid, Owned, Earned Media) is now really the future. (Paid being advertising and sponsorships. Owned being content created by brands/corporations. And Earned being press placements and media partnership).

Earned and Owned have always been sexier than Paid media because they are inherently social (and usually free!). But Advertising has always been immediately measurable and metrics drive the budgets and digital strategy.

Lucky for PR Professionals, the measurement tools for Owned and Earned are getting better and better. Just look at how much the Facebook Insights product has evolved since it launched.

The future of media strategy is the best of all three: Paid, Owned, Earned. And pubic relations professionals can lead the strategy. They have the most experience in strategic communications, cross platform media and rapid response. The future is to think like PR people but measure like Mad Men.

3. Find Your Peeps. These Are The New Influencers

Once upon a time the Internet was populated only by early adopters. They were passionate about the new technologies so they created forums to share their passions. They had the biggest microphone on the Internet. It seemed predominantly male and mainly dedicated to Apple products.. They became lovingly known as fanboys.

Now, more and more people around the world have access to the Internet or mobile technologies. And everyone is passionate about something. We each have opinions and preferences and now we have social graphs that are growing.

PR professionals need get on board with their peeps. Find the people who are most passionate about what you're doing. These are the new “influencers.” The next great influencers campaigns will not be about trying to get a celebrity to retweet you, but tapping into your base. 60% of Facebook users surveyed by digital agency Beyond said they’d be willing to post about a product if they were given a discount or free trial. Now that will be influence.

And you can find your peeps much more easily with the rise of niche networks such as Tumblr — now reaching more than 20 million monthly users — and Pinterest, which just passed 12 million monthly users. These niche social networks are creating mini communities for everything related to topic, brand and subject. Your peeps are there. Find them and engage.

4. The Rise of Fanwomen

All great marketers know that reaching the female demographic is key to campaigns. This has been one of the phenomena of Pinterest's rapid growth — the high percentage of females on the platform. Females have always been a powerful audience for print and TV;. study after study shows they have the buying power in the majority of households. Now they too are online; they have communities and they have influence.

5. Small Teams FTW!

An age-old complaint within the PR industry has been lack of budgets and small staffs. That's likely not going to change anytime soon. But there are new ways PR executives can make their small teams more powerful with fewer resources.

First, embrace the machine. "Automation" is no longer a scary word. Companies such as SocialFlow are developing algorithmic tools to share content to social media channels based on relevance. PR professionals are still responsible for developing the messages and strategy, but now the algorithms tell us when the messages are relevant to the conversation. It just like trying to get your company into a trend piece.

Second, take meetings and ask for what you want. There are many smart people and companies working to develop new products to help manage and measure social outreach. Don't look at these requests for meetings as a nuisance. Take the meetings. Give these developers your list of complaints and have them go think about them. Likely they'll come back in six months with a product that was developed with your wants and needs in mind — maybe even with a discount for the service.

Finally, maximize the media hits you do get. Did you get a spot on the Today show? Good job, but not a job well done. Not until its been shared everywhere.

If your CEO is backstage, snap a photo in the green room and share it on Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook. Check in on Foursquare. Once the video is on the Today website, get it on your blog, YouTube, Facebook and everywhere else.

Because, increasingly, if it didn't happen on the Internet, it didn't happen.

The Future of Digital PR

1. Welcome

Mashable's Stacy Green gave the opening Keynote at the PR News Digital Summit in SF #prndigital

2. Introduction

A little about Mashable

3. PR: What it is, what it isn't

PR is now longer just writing pitching and calling reporters. Digital PR Professionals have to do more than ever and faster. And that's not going to change.

4. We do everything!

Really, we do everything! Photo from Pete Cashmore and Dennis Crowley's keynote interview last year at SXSWi. Stacy Green is crowning Dennis the "mayor."

5. We must look ahead.

The rate of change will only continue to excel. We need to look farther down the road.

6. Social Media is here for good.

Social media isn't going anywhere. We've moved from Social Media growth to saturation. That coupled with mobile growth will shape 2012 trends.

7. We're always connected.

With smartphones, tablets and connected TV, we have gone beyond the second screen. We're now at more than 24 hours of screen per day.

8. The future of strategy.

Paid, Earned, Owned Media (POEM) is the future of media strategy.

9. How to think, how to measure.

The future is to think like PR, but measure like Mad Men.

10. Find your influencers.

Find the people that are passionate about your product online - these are your peeps. Your peeps are the new "influencers."

11. Maximize potential.

Ways to make small teams more powerful.

12. The new reality.

Increasingly, if it is not on the internet, it didn't happen.

13. We can help!

Of course to stay on top of the latest trends in digital PR, follow Mashable!

Mashable
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